Thursday 16 June 2011

Embarrassed for My Home Town


What a bleak morning, to wake up to the news that Vancouver was in chaos again after our team failed to claim the Stanley Cup. I stayed up until 3:30 am here and listened to the game on Radio 1040, falling asleep disappointed, like thousands of other Canuck fans after the Bruins scored into an empty net. When woke up, I went straight to The Vancouver Sun website and saw the result of that loss. I felt sick. I saw a photo of a young man stuffing a shirt into the gas tank of a police car, ready to light it. It looked like a war zone, like Libya or Syria or Egypt these days, but it was all about a hockey game, not about a fight for something as worthwhile as democracy. How sad is that.

I was over here in the UK the last time this madness gripped the city. In 1994 my brothers and I were here on vacation and while we enjoyed a pub lunch, Jack went outside to a phone box to call home. He came back in and announced they were rioting in the streets of Vancouver after the Game 7 loss to the New York Rangers.

While Vancouver has become a sophisticated, “world class” city, there is still the element of mindless physical violence fired by alcohol that goes back a very long way. It reminds us that while we have all the trappings of a civilized city, there are those mutants among us who haven’t yet progressed to a level of intelligence required to live in an advanced society. It’s sad to think that all the camaraderie Vancouver experienced during the Olympics was wiped out in a few hours of mindless destruction by a minority of marauding Neanderthals. How can we fix it?

2 comments:

  1. Hi Maureen,
    I share your sentiments exactly. The one saving grace is that over 15,000 Vancouverites came downtown the next morning to help clean up. It doesn't erase the black eye but it helps to heal...

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